Professor tells college class that critical thinking is not important: 'They grade assignments with AI, they respond to emails with AI, the teacher's assistant is AI.'

Anyone who thinks that critical thinking is not important should not be a college professor.

What is the point of attending college? A great deal of the population thinks that college should be akin to trade school, where you train for a specific job and only that job. You get a Nursing degree to become a nurse, you get an Engineering degree to become an engineer, you get an Accounting degree to become an accountant, and so on. Those are all incredibly valid and practical educational avenues, especially in this increasingly uncertain job market. However, universities were not invented solely to train you for a specific job. 

That is a much more modern conception of the university. For most of its history, higher education was designed to give students a broad liberal arts education that taught them to think critically. Modern universities try to replicate this model by requiring students across all majors to take core classes. You'd be remiss not to attend university without taking at least one writing course, yet many students claim they wish they didn't have to take non-major courses. They think that any class that is not directly related to their future career is a waste of time and money, which goes against the founding principles of higher education. Learning for the sake of learning is valuable, and college is the best time to learn how to think critically. If you can think critically, it will benefit you in any career path that you choose.